Saul Steinberg, Gag Man

I was reading “Saul Steinberg: A Biography,” by Deirdre Bair, on the Kindle app for Mac, when I decided to do a search for the word “cartoon,” so I could see which cartoons had been included.

Here’s a (very) truncated version of the search results:

As you can see, there are lots of mentions of cartoons, but, alas, what you won’t see in the Kindle version are any actual cartoons. Now, I know I’m a bit fixated on cartoons because—hey, I don’t have to explain it to you, you’re reading my newsletter. For my money (already gone in this case), a book about Saul Steinberg, in any form, that doesn’t include some of his actual cartoons and art is not a book about Saul Steinberg.

So I went and found a paper copy of the book in the office, and, lo and behold, there were cartoons, like this one:

And this one:

And this classic:

And all of these, too:

Yet I was not completely satisfied with the selection. The above examples are stylistically cartoons, but are indicative of Steinberg’s transcendence of the magazine-cartoon genre—a genre that emphasizes humor. When Steinberg did the cartoon of the two men duelling in the mouth of a giant alligator, and the one with the assortment of question marks, in the early sixties, his cartoons became equal parts philosophy and art, and no part mirth.

And, truthfully, if this evolution in Steinberg’s style hadn’t happened, there wouldn’t be a five-hundred-and-ninety-one-page tome about him.

But I must admit that I’m a big fan of his early cartoons, and am reminded of a great scene in Woody Allen’s Fellini homage, “Stardust Memories,” in which the aliens tell him, much to his dismay, “We enjoy your films, particularly the early, funny ones.”